The American Spirit Thesis

The American Spirit Essay
The young girl of 10 years remained fixed in front of the machine, despite the announcement that she and the others could have a moment of respite. She futilely endeavored to abandon thoughts of the meager lunch that would barely sustain her throughout her lengthy work day. Although the machines made the stitching appear to be of higher quality, and thus, pleased her oppressive boss, she despised them for their incessant motion and their ability to hold her captive. The young girl merely wished to return to her residence where thoughts of labor would escape her as she slept. However, she was aware that this was an impossibility, so long as the machines ran. As such, she continued her wearisome, repetitious work of
In 1883, the Senate interviewed a tailor, attempting to gain more information regarding the predicament of workers. The senator conducting the interview questioned the tailor about the workers’ food, to which the tailor responded, “Food? They have no time to eat dinner. They have a sandwich in the middle of the day, and in the evening when they go away from work it is the same, and they drink lager of anything they can get.” This underscores the manner in which laborers were required to work for inhumane hours, and were thus unable to consume sufficient amounts of food. Therefore, the tailor’s reply illustrates the dehumanizing effects of machinery, in that machines were subjugating workers through depriving them of opportunities for leisure. Similarly, an account of immigrant Sadie Frowne’s lifestyle was published in The Independent magazine in 1902. Frowne states, “The women don’t go to the synagogue much...they are shut up working hard all the week long and when the Sabbath comes they like to sleep long in bed and afterward they must go out where they can breathe the air.” Frowne portrays how the work schedules of female laborers were demanding through emphasizing how women neglected their religious obligations to gain physical relief. Frowne’s account of the workers’ fatigue in comparison with the tailor’s
In “Why the Farmers Revolted,” Journalist F.B. Tracy discusses the involvement of farmers in politics, writing, “Like a lightning flash, the idea of political action ran through the Alliances. A few farmers’ victories in county campaigns the previous year became a promise of broader conquest, and with one bound the Farmers’ Alliance went into politics all over the West.” Tracy emphasizes the manner in which farmers sought refuge from their financial distress, looking toward participation in politics as a potential method of overcoming proponents of agricultural demise that had ascendancy over governmental positions. Consequently, the Farmers’ Alliance, representative of farmers, became a political organization that later transmuted into the Populist Party, whose platform decried the workings of Wall Street and mechanization. Moreover, within an editorial criticizing the beliefs of the Populist Party, William Allen White affirms, “We need several thousand gibbering idiots to scream about the ‘Great Red Dragon’ of Lombard Street. We don’t need population, we don’t need wealth, we don’t need well-dressed men on the streets, we don’t need cities on the fertile prairies.” White employs a sarcastic and derisive tone to mock the People’s Party as well as to insinuate that population growth and the expansion of urban regions is